Well, That Was Quick

Remember back in April when the vibe across America was “Teachers are heroes!” “Teachers should make more money!”, and “We love our teachers!”? It’s hard not to feel like that sentiment has passed. I see a lot of calls for teachers to go back to work full time. Parents saying that their children “need to be in school”. I can understand this feeling. I truly can. I love being in the classroom, all teachers do. We do our best work there and our students mean more to us than we can say. Distance learning is not the best model for kids with special needs. Multi-model teaching is particularly important for students who learn in different ways. That being said, let me lay some statistics on you.

Time has shown us that children are low risk and have mild symptoms, but they are still very much able to transmit Covid. According to a study by Johns Hopkins, adults ages 20–44 account for 20% of hospitalizations and 12% of ICU admissions. When this study was published on June 28th, there were 2,544,169 recorded Covid cases in the United States, 20% of that would be 508,833. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the typical median age for teachers is about 41 and more than 50% of teachers are between 30-49 years old. Even if the children are going to be okay, even if they only have mild or no symptoms, what about the teachers? What about the staff? What about their family members who they go home to? What about the grandparents taking care of school age children?

I want to go back to work. I love my job, I love my students, I love the people I work with, the Administration at my school is exceptional. I have lost countless hours of sleep worrying about what this coming school year will look like, and how we are going to keep students and staff safe. Today I found out that I will be one of the lucky ones. Our county is going full distance learning. But I know many teachers who are required to return to full in-person learning next month. They are being given guidance on how to formulate their wills in preparation for the coming school year. THEIR WILLS. This is heart-breaking to me. I know that there is no easy answer to all of this, but there are some safe options.

I really don’t know why this is a new thing.

So now I’m sitting here, in front of my computer trying to come up with a plan for next year, trying to work through and imagine every possible scenario for how I can best impart learning on my complex, exceptional student population and I all I can think about are my teacher friends around the United States preparing their wills alongside their lesson plans.

I want you all to know, that I still think you are heroes. I still think you should get paid more. I still love you.